We need to rebuild trust before giving gardaí tasers
I WAS shocked to read Ali Bracken’s report about two gardaí being seriously assaulted during a drugs arrest in Dublin (Mail, Monday).
One of the officers was savagely beaten about the head with a baseball bat and his colleague, somehow, managed to call for back-up as a mob videoed the assault. The officers’ only defensive weapons were their batons and incapacitant spray – and their own extraordinary bravery.
Incidents like this, and the recently-revisited murder of Garda Tony Golden, highlight the difficult job that gardaí face every day. Our men and women in blue are unarmed, unlike other civic forces in Europe, while criminals seem to have unlimited access to weaponry.
The GRA has called for tasers to be given to officers to deal with situations like this baseball bat attack. I would, cautiously, welcome this move. I say ‘cautiously’ because there is currently a trust deficit between the Gardaí and the civilian population.
This deficit isn’t due to cases of garda brutality – thankfully, we appear to have very little evidence of this. The trust issue is systemic rather than based on individual corruption or disloyalty to the precepts inhererent in ‘guarding the peace’.
We, the public, have had to endure months upon months of penalty points scandals, cover-ups and the appalling treatment of whistleblowers. It is shameful – and heartbreaking – that the ordinary garda is tainted by these scandals. The public can not be blamed for feeling sometimes lessthan-enthusiastic about the force. Garda managment must carry full responsibility for damaging our trust.
I believe the Irish public want a force they can believe in. The surge of pride and respect I felt for those hero gardaí is proof of this desire. I am 100% sure that I am not the only person who had this emotional reaction to Ms Bracken’s story.
However, I do feel it is too early to start handing out tasers to frontline gardaí. Not because they will abuse these weapons, but because we need to believe that if an individual DOES go too far, we can trust the powers-that-be to deal with them in a swift and transparent manner.
STEPHEN WALKER, Co. Dublin.
Hitler’s ‘Dub’ connection
A GLARING omission from Guy Walter’s piece on Hitler’s DNA (Mail, Friday) – at least to Irish eyes – was the story of William Patrick Hitler, whose father Aloïs was Hitler’s half-brother.
Aloïs reportedly did a stint in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin and married a Dublin girl. ‘Paddy Hitler’ is certainly a name to conjure with – and maybe sounds more cuddly than the harsh ‘Adolf’.
MIKE ROYCROFT, Co. Tipperary.
‘Sexist’ slogans
I FIND the slogan ‘Trust women and trust doctors’ by pro-abortion campaigners highly sexist, careerist and dangerous.
It’s sexist because it implies women are trustworthy solely on the basis of their sex, and careerist because it implies the same of doctors solely on the basis of their profession. Worst of all, it’s dangerous because it ignores the reality that doctors and medical personnel make mistakes, as anyone familiar with the current cervical smear test scandal can see.
EDEL McDONOUGH, Co. Dublin. ...HAVING listened to the debates about the referendum to repeal the Eighth, one fact is indisputable and that is that Irish women are accessing abortion every day. Some women travel out of the State, others purchase pills online, sometimes for the most tragic of circumstances, and always under a cloud of shame and criminality.
Voting Yes on May 25 will simply ensure that these women will be allowed to make their decisions earlier and safer, supported by Irish doctors and their family.
LOURDA SCOTT, Co. Wicklow.
Where is Trump’s tree?
THE tree planted by Presidents Macron and Trump has disappeared from the White House lawn within a week – so much for the high-level security there! DENNIS FITZGERALD,
Melbourne.